About Us

Dr. Pingnan Shi, known to his students as Dr. Ping, grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution. He escaped Communism in 1989 and then immigrated to the US to work as an engineer in 1995. After a successful engineering career with 15 US patents, he became a high school math teacher in 2011 due to his concern about the sad reality that most American children didn't get adequate math education in both public and private schools. In 2018, he started a nonprofit to research and develop new education models that fit today's rapidly changing global economy. 

In 2023, he started the Poema Academy of Science, Engineering, and Aeronautics to help middle and high school students pursue STEM careers as entrepreneurs. His teaching is based on the principles of Christian classical liberal arts education. He now has three online math classes and runs a 3D printing and engineering club inside the Greenwood Airport in cooperation with the Aeronautical Center of Technology.  

He published a book titled Education 4.0 based on more than 5 years of research. In it, he gives an overview of different education models in human history in both the West and the East and proposes a new education model that is suitable for today's economy which is now experiencing the convergence of artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, cloud computing, and smart manufacturing.